Clark Family Library: Music: Find Music

Why use Music?

Searching for music, especially recordings, is challenging because of the difficulty in describing music textually.

However, finding and studying music scores and recordings themselves is a great way to use primary sources to draw your own conclusions.

Websites

There are many websites that provide access to scores and audio and video recordings. Many of them focus on particular genres, styles, or time periods. Below is just a sample of some of these websites.

Audio Archive
This site contains recordings ranging from alternative news programming, to Grateful Dead concerts, to Old Time Radio shows, to book and poetry readings, to original music uploaded by our users.
Free Music Archive
The Free Music Archive is an interactive library of high-quality, legal audio downloads. The Free Music Archive is directed by WFMU, the most renowned freeform radio station in America. Music Genres include classical, folk, country, hip-hop, experimental, jazz, soul-RnB and more. FMA offers thousands of free downloads under Creative Commons and other licenses.
International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP)
International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP). Major database containing public domain scores and complete works of many composers.
Library of Congress. National Jukebox.
The Library of Congress offers historical sound recordings available to the public free of charge. Some of these were 78 rpm disc recordings from the early 20th century that have been digitized.
The Mutopia Project
The Mutopia Project offers sheet music editions of public domain classical music for free download. All of the music on Mutopia may be freely downloaded, printed, copied, distributed, modified, performed and recorded.
Wikimedia - music
Wikimedia Commons is a media file repository making available public domain and freely-licensed educational media content (images, sound and video clips) to everyone, in their own language.